You remember that whole rant about how I walked in the rain, rather than using the brand, spanking new treadmill that's sitting in my comparatively warm, comparatively dry office?
Yyyyyeah, today I did my whole 10,000 step route in the absolute pissing rain. So - clearly, that works. I feel like I've just done 5,000 steps of walking, and 5,00 strokes of swimming. I may need an intervention, or something like a Post-It stuck to my forehead or somesuch, with the words "That's Why You Have The Treadmill, Dickwad!" on it.
Of course, if I had that, one, I wouldn't be able to read it, and two, it'd fall off in the pissing rain, so...maybe a tattoo on the inside of my retina or instead.
Mind you, I walked in the rain last night too. Came home, sank into a hot bath to warm up.
"You're right, you know?" said d just as we were about to go to bed.
"Really?" That seemed so massively unlikely I had to check. I wasn't sure what I could possibly have been right about, but I was willing to take it.
"Yes, really."
"Good then."
"Those Nazi Scales are messed-up."
"Oh," I said. "Yeah?"
"Yeah, they're all over the place. I just got on them four times and got four wildly different readings. Think they need a new battery or something."
"Ah. Cool then. When they tell me I'm a monstrous Disappearing failure in the morning, I'll tell them to go fuck themselves."
"Yes dear. That'll be fun for you."
And so we went to sleep. As I mentioned, I was really rather annoyed with the way the week had gone - yesterday when I woke up, I weighed in at 18st 12.5, which pissed me off because at various points in this week, I've seen 18st 7, and I've walked most days this week and done nothing especially out of the ordinary, so the bounce-back felt monumentally unfair.
As it happens though, a lot of walking yesterday and a relatively liquid diet along with it, and I weighed in this morning at an official 18st 7.75 pounds.
So that's one unfortunate fart away from a stone and a half (21 pounds) lost since a couple of weeks before Christmas. If nothing else, that proves to my body I'm not just dicking about with this this time. It also means I'm seven pounds and a fart away from the 18 stone border, which is the point at which I start to feel like I'm actually Disappearing. What that means is that it's gone from hard work to second nature. Which in turn means it's things that are first nature that can still, sometimes, trip me up.
Last night, prior to the Nazi Scale conversation but after marching up and down Cardiff Queen Street again, this time in protest at the Orange Obscenity's sudden anti-human clampdown on entry to the US, d had asked me to pick her up a couple of hot dogs from Five Guys and bring them home. No problem, no drama - went, put the order in...
...and then time tunnelled around me. I looked across at the Five Guys milkshake menu, and oh my ever-loving gods, but they sounded good. Having subsisted most of the day on one bowl of oatmeal and many coffees, and clocking up s faintly disappointing 17,000-odd steps, it was the most natural thing in the world to go "Oh, and a malted milk peanut butter shake, no cream..."
I heard myself say it. Heard my brain scream 'Wwwwwwhat the hell? This is what we don't do any more? Whaddaya dooooooinnnnnng?!' And I had the argument with myself - 'Fuck you, it's liquid. It's just a liquid, where's the bad, Oatmeal-Boy? Who can tell you not to do a thing? You know how good they taste. Surely 17,000 steps earns you a shake, right?'
The time tunnel collapsed. The server was looking at my face expectantly.
"Hmm?" I said, having one of those moments where you genuinely don't know if you've said something or only thought it.
"Is that everything for you?" he asked again. I glanced over at the milkshake menu again, felt the longing, the craving. Swallowed.
"Err...yeah. Thanks." And the moment passed.
Or almost - I had five other time tunnel moments while waiting for the order to be delivered, to the extent that I almost tried to take someone else's food when it came out before mine, so keen was I to stop my brain from dangling the icy, creamy pleasure in my path, and point out that there was no line, and that I could just nip across and add a shake to the order, no problem.
Sigh. See? Beware of your first nature - it's the primal pleasure principle and the idea of denying it is where the idea of 'sin' comes from. But, at least for this day, the 'demon' Milkshake didn't trip me up, which means the erratic Nazi Scales this morning were relatively kind, and on we jolly well go. I'd like to tell you the next stop is 18 stone, but it probaby, in all honesty, isn't. There'll probably be some amount of dicking about in the upper half of the 18s before I start to make progress to things like 18st 4. Then, in all likelihood, there'll be endless faffing to get down beneath the border of 18. But the goal at least is to a) get beneath 18st 7, and then b) get beneath 18 stone.
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